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Saturday, December 11, 2004

54,663 words/208 pages of comedy gold

OK. Now I'm really finished with my book. Rachel read the whole thing Thursday in about five hours. Seven freaking months of tearing myself apart and not sleeping properly and not being able to think about anything else, and she dispenses with it in less time than it takes to watch Wrestlemania.

But, Rachel reads an astounding number of books. Perhaps it will take you a good six hours to get through it. Knowing how long it takes to write a book now makes me feel better about how long it usually takes me to read one.

And the good news is that Rachel saw no problems with the book. There were a few edits that needed to be made, but nothing major.

So, this afternoon, after making all the changes and adding three more jokes to the final part of the book, I sent off three query letters to agents (I read somewhere that it's a bad idea to have more than three letters out at a time. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps the answer will manifest itself down the road). Let the race begin to see which one of them will be the first to send me a rejection letter.

All I can do now is wait. Once I get a rejection, I'll send out another query letter. Thursday I bought a box of 100 big envelopes to use to send synopses, sample chapters and full manuscripts to agents. Once I'm out of envelopes, perhaps I'll know I have failed. Perhaps I'll know I need to buy more envelopes.

As soon as I have some money, I plan to buy some British postage stamps so that I can send queries, etc. to UK agents (almost all agents ask that you send them a self-addressed stamped envelope so as to save them the cost of rejecting you), because I've convinced myself that I would have an audience there.

Despite being the love child of Hugh Grant and Johnny Bravo, I was rejected by girls many a time in me dating days, so I reckon literary rejection can't be much worse. But it still makes me feel sick to my stomach to think about it.

And it's very weird to suddenly not have to be thinking and rethinking a story. Perhaps now I will start on my other book idea: a Mormon missionary turned Las Vegas hit man. The book is called "A Deadly Calling."

No, I'm lying.

But I will now have to focus my energy on something. I know -- I'll work to make this blog not suck so much. No, I'm lying about that, too.

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Who's writing this?

Hola. I'm Chris Cope, author of the books The Way Forward and Cwrw am Ddim. I'm originally from Austin, Texas, but through a series of terrible and wonderful events called "life," I now reside in Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland -- specifically the bit that is Penarth, Wales. Occasionally I write things.